Emmy-winning TV director Johnson dies

He helmed 'That Certain Summer'

Emmy-winning television director Lamont Johnson, who tackled touchy subjects in such made-for-TV movies as “My Sweet Charlie” about interracial romance and “That Certain Summer” about homosexuality, died Oct. 24 in Monterey, Calif., of congestive heart failure. He was 88.

He won Emmys for directing Sam Waterston in Gore Vidal’s “Lincoln” and the mini “Wallenberg: A Hero’s Story.”

Other credits include “The Execution of Private Slovik,” and episodes of “Have Gun — Will Travel,” “Peter Gunn” and “Twilight Zone.”

Johnson was critically acclaimed, and won a DGA award, for his delicate handling of 1970 pic “Charlie,” starring Patty Duke as a pregnant Southern runaway who hooks up with a black lawyer. Other highlights included 1972’s Martin Sheen starrer “Summer” about a teen who discovers his father is gay; 1981’s “Crisis at Central High,” which centered around the civil rights movement; and “Fear on Trial,” about blacklisting.

Survivors include a son, a daughter, three grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.